Gena is responsible for ADB’s support for private sector infrastructure projects in the Philippines, Lao PDR and Vietnam, and has been involved in various infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia covering power and transport sectors. Before joining ADB in 2003, she worked on loan syndications, corporate finance, credit risk management, trade operations, and financial institutions for Citibank.

Mathilde Mesnard is Deputy Director of the OECD Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs since 2016. She is responsible for the policy areas of financial markets and corporate governance and corporate finance, as well as the Centre for Responsible Business Conduct.

India has followed an idiosyncratic pattern of development, certainly compared with other fast-growing Asian economies. While the importance of services rather than manufacturing is widely noted, within manufacturing India has emphasized skill-intensive rather than labor-intensive manufacturing, and industries with higher-than-average scale. Some of these distinctive patterns existed prior to the beginning of economic reforms in the 1980s, and stem from the idiosyncratic policies adopted after India's independence.

E.N. Venkat is a Partner at Aavishkaar Venture Management Services (AVMS) and leads its first regional fund – the Aavishkaar Frontier Fund (AFF). Founded in 2002, the Aavishkaar - Intellecap Group now manages assets of over one billion dollars, thru a mix of fund and balance sheet vehicles. Venkat has over 30 years of experience in the Financial Services and Corporate sector in different parts of Asia.

Phuong-Anh Nguyen is an assistant professor of finance, she obtained her Ph.D. in Finance at Virginia Tech.

Ambrus Kecskés is an Associate Professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University. He studied at the Rotman School of Management and earned a B.Com. and Ph.D. in Finance, both from the University of Toronto.

François Derrien is a Professor of Finance at HEC Paris. His research is in corporate finance, with a focus on how the environment of firms affects their financing and investment decisions, and ultimately, their performance and value. In that vein, he has studied the impact of security analysts on corporate policies, as well as the effect of the horizon of investors on firms’ decisions. More recently, his work has focused on understanding how local labor markets affect firms. In particular, he studies the impact of local demographics on the ability of firms to innovate and to grow.